


Walls of Glass

by BenSoloUnmasked



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Angst, Emotional Baggage, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Flashbacks, Force Bond (Star Wars), Implied/Referenced Torture, Mind Reading, Star Wars: The Last Jedi Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-21
Updated: 2018-01-21
Packaged: 2019-03-07 15:58:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,233
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13438236
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BenSoloUnmasked/pseuds/BenSoloUnmasked
Summary: "If his face was a magnifying glass then hers was a microscope; the creases of her eyes and the curve of her mouth betraying just how much she felt every emotion, unable to give even the flimsiest of performances to the contrary.This was not the Jedi way, she knew that. Passion was the path to darkness. Ben was the way that he was because he was the same, always feeling too much. Fear and anger drove him to the dark. Where then, she wondered, would they drive her?"---The force bond returns, and Rey knows that if she wants to truly understand the man inside the monster she'll have to use one of his own tricks against him. She's never read somebody's thoughts like this, and the experience threatens to overwhelm them both; watching somebody weaponise their weakness makes it hard to find the will to disarm them.





	Walls of Glass

It was the little things that she always felt first. It had been months but the second it started, she knew. There was a familiar feeling in the tips of her fingers, a breathy light-headedness that stalled her senses for the briefest of moments before the big things started; her surrounds muting into near silence and the echo of another place pounding in her head.

Rey had been dreading this moment. She knew it was only a matter of time before the bond returned. It hadn’t died with Snoke, as she had hoped. That last pitiful look on Ben’s face as she had shut him out - in every sense of the word - was never going to be the last she saw of him, no matter how hard she hoped.

But then, she did see him. Often. In her dreams. She dreamed of the island no longer; that place was gone to her now. To dream of the island would be to dream of Luke, and that dark mirrored place, and everything in between. It would hurt too much, knowing Luke was gone. Instead, she dreamed of the past. Not of the far distant past, not of childhood on Jakku, but of recent moments that had passed by, as though her brain was telling her: _look again, look deeper, you missed something the first time._

When she slept she saw Ben - or was he Kylo Ren to her again? She wasn’t sure how to think of him now. The man underneath the mask transformed by the minute. Every time she thought she had a grasp on him, it mutated, slipped away.

Her dream replayed their fight in Snoke’s throne room over and over, flashes of bright red and deepest black. Each time was like the first time, all sweat and fear and exhilaration when that lightsaber first flew to her hand, that look of conviction in Ben’s eyes as she took it and stood. At least, she thought it had been conviction. Whatever it was, it hadn’t lasted long.

She saw that moment first - the moment her hopes became truth and vindication had washed over her like a cooling breeze. And then the inverse; next that moment of sick disbelief as Ben held out his hand, going back to the dark, begging her to take his hand and get dragged down with him. Not disbelief, she had realised over time, but disappointment. The disbelief had been directed inward, towards herself. Disbelief that she had considered his offer for as long as she had; disbelief that she had considered it at all.

If she was honest with herself, the certainty she had felt over his journey to the light had been unwise. Had she let herself dwell on it for longer, she wouldn’t have been so taken aback by the suddenness of it all - enemies to allies and back again in the next breath.

It was, she supposed now, inevitable. Always had been. No matter what vision she though she’d been given, it was foolish to believe so wholeheartedly in the redemption of such a man.

Such a man who she could now feel in her presence, here in her private quarters at the Resistance Base, so close despite distance. The tingling in her fingers met the tingling in her head and she knew.

Fifty-six days of silence, of solitude. It had taken fifty-six days for the force to knit them back together, but it had felt like minutes, seconds, moments.

She listened before looking. As usual, his surrounds were eerie-quiet, the nothingness echoing around him. On her end, there was no pouring rain, no crackling fire... just stillness this time. Peace.

Turning, ready to meet his eye, Rey found him.

She had thought about where he’d be when the bond returned. She often imagined him in a version of the throne room. Not the actual room, of course, not aboard Snoke’s destroyed ship, but a recreation. He seemed to like recreating.

 _For someone so obsessed with letting the past go_ , she thought to herself, _He sure does love to mimic it._

But this wasn’t a throne room.

This looked like sleeping quarters, but it was hard to be sure. For the first time she could see where he stood, the edges of his room fading into her own. Tables were overturned, leaving his possessions strewn over the floor. The walls smoked with deep slashes, melted grooves, some still fresh and glowing. Sound finally came into focus and she could hear the uneven hum of his lightsaber, lighting the room red, revealing the damage it had done.

He stood with his back to her, the weapon in his hand held with characteristic white-knuckle delicacy. His chest rose and fell rhythmically, exerted from the effort. The lightsaber deactivated, and without its light the room seemed sterile again despite the destruction. His hand was shaking.

 _He hasn’t noticed me_ , Rey realised. _If I can break the bond he’d never know I was even here..._

But as quickly as the thought entered her head she banished it; the dread she had felt at the bond returning was not in having to talk to him again, but in how to put into words all the things she wanted to say.

‘Ben,’ she said, the name leaving her lips in a whisper.

It may as well have been a shout to Ben. His head rose sharply and he whipped himself around to face her, reigniting his lightsaber out of instinct.

Their eyes locked and she saw through him for a moment - the mixture of fear and shock at seeing her face after so long - before his expression hardened and stilled as though a wall had been put up. That wall of his... How long until he figured out that the wall was made of glass, and his feelings were magnified instead of hidden?

His breath caught in his throat and he straightened up, deactivating his crackling lightsaber after a moment of consideration.

‘Rey,’ he said stiffly.

He wiped sweat from his forehead self-consciously, trying to regain his composure.

Rey looked around the room, still taking in the destruction. Ben looked over his shoulder and turned back.

‘You can see my surroundings?’ he asked. ‘I still can’t see yours. What can you see?’

‘Your room,’ she breathed. ‘It’s... I take it you lost your temper?’

Ben looked embarrassed now, his brow lowering in a motion she barely noticed. His usual audience when he lost control was a Stormtrooper or two, maybe Hux on a bad day; never someone so... intimate. Never someone he couldn’t hide the truth from.

‘There has been a setback,’ he replied, cryptic as ever, his voice wavering almost beyond perception. Almost. The vulnerability in his voice was something that he couldn’t hide now that he strode around barefaced.

‘What happened to your mask?’ Rey asked, as if this vulnerability was at the forefront of her mind. She wasn’t as interested in the answer as she was in needling into him; goading him into a conversation.

‘Gone,’ came Ben’s simple reply. ‘I had no need for it.’

The scepticism must have shown on Rey’s face. Ben stepped back and regarded her, narrowing his eyes slightly.

‘You don’t care,’ he continued, anger encouraging him to dismiss her expression. ‘What do you want?’

She didn’t know.

Her understanding of it frustrated her; she _did_ know what she wanted. She wanted him to come to the light. The problem was that she couldn’t let herself want it. The Ben she had held out hope for was gone. What was the point in trying to resurrect him?

‘Luke told me what happened that night,’ Rey said despite herself, trying anyway. ‘What really happened.’

‘No he didn’t. More lies, no doubt.’

‘No, Ben. He told me the truth: it was fear that drove him, fear of what you were becoming. A moment of fear that passed. If only you hadn’t seen...’

‘It was jealousy,’ Ben spat. ‘Fear of me surpassing him. Replacing him.’

‘It’s the Sith who rise to kill their masters, not the Jedi,’ Rey said seriously. ‘What you did to Snoke is not what Luke feared you’d do to him. Luke knew you. He just didn’t know what to do to help you.’

Ben mused on this for a moment. ‘There was no helping me,’ he said eventually. ‘Whatever else he would have done I would have resented, I would have pushed back against it, and things probably would have been worse. I think maybe... Maybe he was right to try and kill me. Maybe that’s the only way this ends.’

‘No,’ Rey said again, and the word sounded just as hollow as every other time. ‘It’s not too late. Let yourself come to the light.’

He was doing that thing again, where his jaw set and his eyes wavered. She was learning that this was his way of figuring out his emotions; understanding them so that he knew just how to push them away. His expression cleared and there it was again, the wall that showed just as much as it hid.

‘You’re not a monster,’ Rey continued, stepping forward cautiously as though approaching a wild animal. ‘I know I told you that, forever ago, but you’re not. You tell yourself that to make it easier to detach, to do awful things and not feel them... but it’s not true. You’re no monster, Ben. You’re a man. Just a man.’

He bristled at that, exuding discomfort at being labelled as something so simple.

‘You don’t know me,’ he hissed, hands curling into fists. ‘The things I’ve done...’

‘The things you have done are monstrous,’ Rey interrupted. ‘Some on the wrong side of forgiveness. But they are the actions of a man. A man who is not at peace with himself.’

‘You speak as though you know peace,’ Ben spat. ‘But I can feel the confusion within you. I can feel your fury, your desperation. I don’t need to force my way in to know how much of yourself is at war. It’s written all over you.’

She knew it was true. If his face was a magnifying glass then hers was a microscope; the creases of her eyes and the curve of her mouth betraying just how much she felt every emotion, unable to give even the flimsiest of performances to the contrary.

Her heart was a hydra; every time she tried to cut a feeling away it came back twofold, stronger than ever.

This was not the Jedi way, she knew that. Passion was the path to darkness. Ben was the way that he was because he was the same, always feeling too much. Fear and anger drove him to the dark. Where then, she wondered, would they drive her?

He’d noticed it in her. He’d told her as much when they connected on the island.

_You have that look in your eyes. From the forest. You called me a monster._

He had such a read on her, the same kind of read she had on him. She felt exposed, vulnerable in his presence. Did she make him feel the same way? Did he dread her piercing gaze as she did his?

‘I’ve got more control of my emotions than you do, at least,’ she offered meekly as a deflection. ‘I’m not like you.’

‘But you could be,’ he replied immediately. ‘And that scares you. It’s the only thing you’re afraid of anymore.’

‘Get out of my head,’ Rey said forcefully, looking away.

‘I’m not in there,’ Ben pointed out. ‘I can’t get in. Believe me, I’ve tried.’

Rey remembered being strapped down in that chair on Starkiller Base, watching him take off the mask for the first time, resisting his attempts to pull information from her mind. He’d skimmed the surface, dreams and emotions and superficial thoughts, but he couldn’t break through. She’d pushed back as best she could, untrained as she was, and managed to take something from him - a fear that threatened to suffocate him.

_You’re afraid. That you will never be as strong as Darth Vader._

A fear of inadequacy.

That fear was the reason he pushed so hard to be the most powerful version of himself, to the point where he wasn’t even sure who he was anymore. He pushed and pushed until he twisted himself into something else, something terrible.

It was the reason he’d ordered a thousand rounds fired onto Luke on Crait rather than just go down there himself to begin with. It was the reason that he’d been terrified when he thought this plan might have succeeded - he was barely living up to being the boy who killed his father, how could he live up to being the man who had killed Luke Skywalker?

Everyone saw his weakness. Snoke himself had manipulated it, as he’d said in the throne room. Rey saw through him like he was made of tissue paper. Even Hux looked at him sometimes like he was a broken thing. It was driving him mad.

‘I remember,’ Rey said eventually. ‘That didn’t end so well for you.’

‘I didn’t expect your strength,’ he replied honestly. ‘How powerful you are, Rey. I don’t think you even know.’

‘This is a big leap from calling me nothing,’ she said, her tone sharp.

‘You’re not nothing, not to me,’ he said, and again she was back in that throne room, just like in her dreams, watching him hold out his hand to her. ‘Your potential… You have no birthright,’ he continued, snapping her back to reality. ‘Nothing to prove. Nobody to live up to, to disappoint.’

 _He’s jealous_ , she realised, _This man who had everything from the beginning - a family, a future, a place in the world - is jealous of a nameless scavenger._

He could feel that he was betraying himself the more he spoke, revealing more of his own self-doubt by the moment. It wasn’t wise to be so candid.

Rey’s expression changed and he took a physical step back, wary.

She had never attempted it before, not properly, but Rey reached her hand out anyway, fingers splayed and directed at his face. Even through the distance that separated them she could feel it gradually starting to work, the force letting her slip into his head like she was picking a lock.

Ben tried to fight it but he was too exhausted; too emotionally drained. He had spent so much time probing his way into other people’s heads that the opposite sensation alarmed him beyond proper action. Screwing up his face and grunting with exertion he did what he could to block her attempts, but it made no difference.

She was in.

\---

A thousand images flash by her in an instant and she’s overwhelmed by the suddenness, the variety of emotions. Vignettes fade in and out – memories dulled with age – but the feelings attached to them haven’t lost their sheen, their sting. They hit her with a ferocity that threatens to be unending.

She sees a small dark haired boy, tottering around the Millennium Falcon, sitting on his father’s lap in the cockpit and being told story after story of battles and medals and winning the love of a princess.

Again, the dark haired boy, this time sitting alone and staring up at the sky as she so often had herself, wondering why his father no longer stood still enough for stories, why his mother was too busy to give anything but life advice that sounded like a warning. Wondering why, but knowing one thing for sure – he was being sent away soon. For his skill, they said, but he knew otherwise. He was in the way.

The same boy, older now, holding a lightsaber for the first time, and knowing even then that the way he felt with it in his hands was not the way he was supposed to feel.

Older still, resentment brewing inside him as he compares Luke’s teachings to those of Snoke, wishing he wasn’t being treated like a pawn in a game that he wasn’t even playing yet.

That night months later, seeing Luke standing over him, lightsaber ignited and ready to strike, his remorseful eyes not stopping Ben from striking first. He finds no pleasure in taking the lives of those students who try to fight back, but he’s sure he has no other choice. Burning the temple is another matter entirely; that temple that had become a prison. He remembers laughing, but the sound as Rey hears it is alien, as though it’s not coming from his body.

She sees many memories aboard many ships: building a mask, working with a cracked kyber crystal, donning a cloak. Getting used to a new name, people fearing him enough hang on his words like gospel. Kneeling to a master that was oftentimes alternately kind and cruel, flattering and demoralising, building him up and breaking him down until he had been reassembled into something beyond repair.

His memory of her interrogation flies past and it shakes Rey to feel it as he felt it; all frustration and admiration.

_Don’t be afraid, I feel it too._

The words coming out of his mouth had actually meant something, she realises - their connection was set, even before Snoke had bridged their minds with the force bond. There was something between the two of them that could not be severed.

_I am being torn apart. I want to be free of this pain._

Han Solo is standing before him greyed with age but softened by a hopefulness that she can feel driving Ben to distraction. Love and hate flow through him in equal measure and he does the only thing he knows to quell the conflict; he plunges the lightsaber through his father’s chest and for a brief moment he feels nothing at all - blissful relief - before the bowcaster blast hits and pain explodes from his side.

With pain, the other emotions come back, but pain is something he can use. She’s in his head as he beats his own wound relentlessly in the forest, a sick ritual where each blow fuels his anger, his strength, forcing out the light. Reliving it from the other side is surreal, Rey finds, and she gets swept up in his rage even as she can see herself through his eyes.

She’s watching herself lock lightsabers with him now, sweating in the snow. She remembers the exhilaration of it and he feels the same, leaning into every sweep of the lightsaber and marvelling that he‘s met his match in her. Her weapon slashes against his face and she feels his pain, but it’s not the same pain as the one in his side, the one he can use - it’s pain that brings shame and terror beyond usefulness.

More flashes pass her by, and she’s firmly inside his head now, seeing things through his eyes and feeling everything as he did, still does. Fury at the sneer on Hux’s face when he’s rescued from Starkiller Base, broken and bleeding. Frustration with his own reflection as his face heals. Humiliation as Snoke berates him for his failure, for not living up to his bloodline, for being unbalanced.

_Alas, you are no Vader. You are just a child in a mask._

Rey should have laughed at that comment - for all his arrogance, Snoke had been right about something - but she feels something twist inside Ben, like a creature writhing in pain. There it was again, that fear of inadequacy, of not being taken seriously, of being a boy left behind while everyone else made the decisions. She feels sick with it, fear deeper than any she’s felt before.

He’s in the elevator now, his whole body shaking, knowing Snoke is right. He smashes his mask against the wall, again and again. She knew he had been lying when he said he no longer needed it, but here was the proof; without it he is exposed, on show, the discord in his soul pouring from his face.

The discord continues as she sees him refuse to fire upon the Resistance cruiser, sensing his mother is aboard, the unbalance within him forcing his thumb off the trigger. Leia had told Rey this had happened - that she sensed her son fly past and make the decision not to fire - but she hadn’t really believed it. How could it be true? How could the man who had killed his own father suddenly find his humanity behind the trigger of a warship?

Next the moments of their first few connections, and Rey is relieved to find that is hasn’t all been an act, that the force bond was a genuine shock to him too, that it unnerves him just as much as it did her at first.

There’s a curious stillness in him as she hurls rage at him from across the galaxy, calling him “snake” and “monster”. The more she voices her hate, the easier he’s finding it to connect to the dark and agree.

_I am a monster._

As he says it, standing there amidst the rain that he can’t feel, part of him aches.

They’re talking in the hut now, telling each other they aren’t alone. She reaches her hand out and he removes his glove slowly, reaching his hand out in kind. The flurry of emotions within him is overwhelming. The same yearning, the same desperation, but above it something she hadn’t expected: fear again.

Kylo Ren has never known affection. Ben has, a lifetime ago, but he’s long since forgotten what the touch of skin to skin means beyond his father reaching out in those final moments to hold his face. This moment means so much more to him than a test of trust.

Ben’s fingertips brush hers and it’s like electricity passing between them. His lip begins to twitch upwards ever so slightly with the magic of it all, his soul against all odds becoming buoyant, the shroud lifting—

But then Luke bursts in, and everything evaporates in an instant. The beginnings of a smile vanish and instead a snarl contorts his mouth into something painful as he roars with fury, Luke having taken hope from him yet again.

He grabs his lightsaber, one hand still gloveless, and ignites it, ready to destroy something, anything. He holds it aloft, but the cool metal in his bare palm is reminding him of how much he could lose by letting himself care this much, and instead he shuts it down, throws it to the floor, and stifles a sob.

It’s becoming too much for Rey, being in his head and seeing all this. Waves of emotion crest high and break, and it’s harder and harder for her to remind herself of who he is, what he is, what he’s done.

Now the elevator again, this time with Rey in tow after having arrived aboard ship. He tries not to look at her, knowing what’s coming. She says his name, his childhood name.

_Ben._

She tells him he’ll turn, that she’s seen it. He deflects, telling her the same, teasing her with the knowledge from his vision. Something had flashed past him as they disconnected in the hut; a glimpse of shapes. People, he had realised. Disgusting nobodies in the desert. He could use that.

If it came to that, of course. If she survived.

The mixture of emotions reaches boiling point as he watches Snoke torture Rey, the platitudes of redemption that he’d been given as he entered doing nothing to stop them from threatening to overflow. She’s fighting, doing her best, as he knew she would from the moment she arrived. She’s pushing back but there’s nothing she can do, they’ve won.

 _So_ , Ben wonders as he looks up at her suspended in the air, screaming, _Why am I not satisfied?_

Snoke propels Rey’s kneeling body slowly towards him now, and Ben knows what’s coming next.

_Son of darkness. Heir apparent to Darth Vader._

More titles. More names to bury himself under. More chances at playing pretend.

To hell with all of it.

_Where there was conflict I now sense resolve._

Ben has become still now, and from her perch in his head Rey can feel him trying something he hasn’t done in years; he pushes fear aside, lets anger go. He reaches down within him and draws on an old teaching from Luke, one that he’s tried to forget. He’s attempting to harness serenity.

He’s trying to use the light, Rey realises.

_Where there was weakness, strength._

He’s preparing himself as Snoke shuts his eyes, holding his breath and doing his best not to overthink his next move.

_I see him turning the lightsaber to strike true._

Ben’s making dual movements, struggling to keep his barriers up so that Snoke can’t see what he’s doing – what he’s _really_ doing. Calm washes over him, the by-product of preparing to carry out a duty that he actually believes in.

_And now, foolish child, he ignites it and kills his true enemy!_

The lightsaber activates and meets its mark, the Supreme Leader cleft in twain by a shock of blue light. It flies towards them and Rey reaches up to meet it, getting to her feet, radiating a look of thanks, of determination, of hope. They turn and fight the Praetorian Guard back to back, and Ben has never felt anything quite like it before in his life. He pushes the light back down without hesitation; he needs the rawness of anger for this battle, he needs everything but serenity.

It’s like being in one of her dreams, reliving every moment right down to the ending – him holding out his hand and shouting at her.

_No, no. You're still holding on! Let go!_

From his side of things she feels more than anger, more than frustration. He’s as disappointed as she is and inside he’s screaming, heartbroken, wondering how he could have played it better. He offers her the truth of her parents but all that does is make her cry; she’s known it for years, really, and being called nothing only serves to remind her that her choices are all she has to build her own image, write her own narrative – a luxury he’s never known.

She pities his confusion, as he wonders why his earnest eyes and breaking voice aren’t convincing her to take his hand. He has never given this much of his true self to anyone, and now he is devastated in every sense of the word.

They struggle over the lightsaber now and the flash of light as it breaks in two blinds her as though she were standing there all over again, hand outstretched.

Ben is waking up, staggering across the room, unable to meet Hux’s eye. He goes to say what happened – proclaim that he has fulfilled destiny by dethroning Snoke himself like all good apprentices should – but instead the words stick in his throat and he blames Rey. She would have been the one, if she had been able; it may as well be true.

He’s next in line either way, he realises, as he’s choking Hux for his insubordination.

_Long live the Supreme Leader._

Another name. A new title to try and bury the old. Maybe this one would suffice where the others had failed. If he couldn’t be Ben, or Ren, this was the next best thing. This was the only thing.

_Did you come back to say you forgive me? To save my soul?_

He’s standing before Luke and the words fly out of his mouth like arrows tipped with poison, making sure Luke has no option but to say no, because if he says yes then Ben might just fall apart. He feels so much for this man, his old master: hate, resentment, reverence, twisted pride – but above all, Ben fears him as though he is still that child in the bed, meeting his master’s killing stroke.

_I failed you, Ben. I'm sorry._

Was that sincerity? Was he being mocked? Ben didn’t want to find out. His conflict rises up again as if nothing has changed, as if the throne room hadn’t happened, and he shuts out everything he can of the light.

A smooth battle – too smooth. White turns to red underfoot. Their lightsabers do not meet. Time to end it.

Ben charges and delivers his killing blow, the lightsaber feeling heavy in his hands as he completes his controlled slide. Very real terror strikes him from all sides and his whole body shakes with the knowledge of what he’s done.

He has done it. Why has he done it? It is done.

But it isn’t. Unexpected relief hits him. There was Luke, very much intact, looking at him with pity – such pity that Ben felt like he was on that catwalk with his father again, being torn apart. Luke was many things, Ben rationalised, but he was not immortal. There had to be an explanation. He walks forward, lightsaber held out straight, piercing Luke’s non-corporeal form with a shimmer. Relief leaves him. Fury replaces it.

_See you around, kid._

Ben was a child again, not living up to expectations, proving himself to be unworthy of the responsibilities that nobody trusted him enough to give him.

As Luke disappears, Ben falls to his knees, letting out the kind of scream that he usually fights to internalise. Rey felt the force of it travel up his spine and hers in kind, her presence in his head as uncomfortable as ever.

Failure.

The Resistance, already long gone. Rey, alive. Luke, smiling smugly from a rock somewhere. His humiliation complete in what should have been his hour of triumph.

Inadequacy.

How can he go on? Who will trust him to lead? Wielding fear and hiding under his new title is the only means of control left to him. 

Fear.

Oh, how fear had invaded him now.

Rey feels him being crushed by the weight of it, and as she watches herself close the door of the Millennium Falcon and cut off their last force bond she feels the last thing she expects: guilt.

Guilt that she hasn’t done enough. Guilt that she hasn’t known the depth of his confusion until now – but how could she without entering his mind like this? It didn’t take much to sense his conflict, but the layers underneath went forever, peeling back into cavernous eternity.

There are other flashes now, thick and fast. Ben is unhinged, reacting with rage to the smallest of transgressions. Nobody is safe, no Stormtrooper too lowly, no general too important. He doesn’t like to kill, she knows this now, but necks across the First Order fleet are bruised from fingerless constriction. There is no escaping the Supreme Leader’s wrath, his unpredictability. Hux longs for the days of Snoke.

She sees him rebuilding the throne room, meticulously recreating what he can from memory. He sits on his throne, barking orders. He’s jumping around the galaxy, reaching dead end after dead end in his search for the Resistance. She can feel another presence in his head and she realises it’s him, from the outside, trying to remove her. There’s something he doesn’t want her to see.

He’s gathering intelligence, ripping it from the head of some poor captured Resistance pilot. He has it, finally. The site of the new Resistance base. He orders the pilot to be dealt with. There can’t be any loose ends, not now that he knows for sure. He has the location.

Ben’s trying to force her out of his head, pushing back, putting up walls. But it may as well be more glass; everything is as transparent as ever. She breaks through the walls with ease, determined to know how close his fleet is, how quickly she needs to get the Resistance alerted and on the move once more.

She sees Hux ask for their new trajectory, and Ben finally gives the lie he’s been preparing for weeks. A different location to the one he’d retrieved; that of an old base, functional enough to convince the First Order that they’d come just a fraction too late. Enough to look like the intelligence he’d gathered had been convincing. Enough to look like he was trying.

She had found the truth he’d tried to hide: he didn’t want to find them. He was too afraid of what the man – the monster – inside of him would do. Too afraid of what would happen if he failed to do it. Too afraid of having to choose between being the bad son, the fallen Jedi, the failed Supreme Leader. If he stood face to face with Rey and his mother, he’d come out at least one of those things, even if it was in death. Especially in death, which he was fearing and anticipating in equal measure more and more each day.

No. Better to lie.

He excuses himself from the control room, fighting the urge to break into a run as he returns to his chambers.

His emotions boil over as soon as the door shuts behind him, and he ignites his lightsaber, hacking and slashing at the walls, the furniture, all of it, cursing the way fear has made him indecisive. Fear and anger… Snoke had told him they were the path of the dark, of strength. Why, then, did he feel weaker by the minute?

He stills after a while, feeling a tingling in the back of his neck, and Rey realises that she’s caught up to the present.

She takes her leave.

\---

Rey was thrown back as she exited, staggering on her feet. She took a moment to consolidate all that she had seen before looking at Ben for confirmation.

He was a mess of emotions. The violation of his mind had taken its toll and he was disoriented, unsteady. Tears welled in his eyes, threatening to spill.

‘Ben,’ she said thickly, hand at her mouth as she worked to separate her feelings from his that she had brought back out with her.

That did it. Ben was crying.

She wrestled compassion down, doing her best to hide it away. She’d seen the depths of his conflict, the places where his soul had begun to fracture, but she’d bared witness to his actions too, and those strayed far from virtue. The man before her was a mess of contradictions and uncertainties.

‘Did Luke teach you that trick?’ he hissed, defiantly ignoring his tears and bringing a bracing hand to his forehead.

She shook her head, her thoughts distant. Luke would never teach such a skill, especially not in such a manner as she had used it. The tempest inside her raged on, overwhelming doubt threatening to swallow her up. She grabbed onto the first question that came into her mind and ran with it, urgently needing the answer.

‘Ben…’ she tried again. ‘Ben, why are you still hunting the Resistance? Call off the First Order. Stop all of this.’

Rey didn’t need to force her way back into his head to know that anger was brewing inside him, the kind that ended in broken bones and strangled breaths.

‘I need to find you,’ Ben angrily choked his reply, ‘I need to finish this. Until it’s over I can’t—‘

‘You think you can bury your feelings in a grave alongside me and your mother?’ Rey asked quietly, ‘You know it’s not that easy. Killing your father didn’t change anything, why would this be any different? You’ve already had the chance to kill Leia and you didn’t take it.’

‘I should have,’ Ben snarled, ‘It was a moment of weakness.’

‘Why are you fighting against yourself?’

‘Sentiment,’ he spat, saying what she already knows. ‘It’s what killed my grandfather. It won’t be what kills me.’

Rey shook her head. Again, he was looking to the past as he tried to dismantle it.

‘Sentiment _saved_ your grandfather,’ she said. ‘Why are you trying so hard to make his mistakes?’

Ben didn’t have an answer. She longed to know what he was thinking, but the thought of diving into his head again was too much to bear. Instead she looked to his surroundings, walls still smouldering, and thought back to their earlier conversation. 

‘You said earlier that there was a setback?’ Rey enquired after a moment.

He waited thoughtfully for a moment before responding, as though choosing between a selection of responses. When he finally answered, his eyes were cloudy, but sincere.

‘I… I am the setback,’ Ben admitted. ‘It’s me. If the First Order are to succeed then I can’t play any further part.’

‘Then leave,’ Rey implored, beyond frustration. ‘Join us and we can stop them.’

‘I don’t want to stop them,’ he said petulantly, ‘But I don’t want to help them, either. Rey…’

Rey can practically hear him say it before his lips even move, she’s so certain of what’s coming.

‘… Rey,’ he continued. ‘Let’s forget all of it. Please, let’s go, just the two of us. We can start something new together and leave the rest of it behind. Please. Don’t make me beg.’

She looked at him with sympathy; just as he has echoed his words aboard the Supremacy, she must echo her reaction.

‘You know that I can’t,’ she said, her words coming out breathy and muted. ‘Ben, my place is with the Resistance. Yours should be too. If _you_ would only join _me_ —’

‘This is why I need to find you!’ he shouted, interrupting her. ‘This is why I need to hunt you down and destroy you, all of you!’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m doubting my place! My feelings for you make me weak, can’t you see that? Couldn’t you feel it when you were playing around in here?’ He hit himself in the head as a gesture, hard. ‘Where you are involved, I am beyond uselessness!’

Stunned into silence, Rey closed her mouth, biting back whatever her next remark had been. She stared at him, watching for the regret she’s sure he is feeling over his outburst, waiting for the wall to come up again.

But to her surprise, he instead made the decision to let the emotion play across his face without shame. He turned his chin up, defiantly displaying the mix of tears and sweat on his cheeks. A move, it took her a moment to realise, designed to exhibit honesty.

‘You saw it in my head, Rey,’ he said quietly. ‘What I tried to hide from you. What I’ve been doing, how it has to end.’

Uncomfortable with the direction the conversation was taking, Rey turned her head away.

‘You know what you have to do,’ he continued. ‘I can’t throw them off the scent of the Resistance forever. You know what needs to be done.’

Rey looked back at him, overcome with emotion. She knew. She didn’t like it, but there was no denying that she knew.

‘As long as I live, the Resistance is in danger,’ Ben went on, stepping forward. ‘ _You_ are in danger. My mother…’ 

‘Why are you asking this of me?’ Rey asked, stepping forward to meet him. ‘Why are you so sure that this is how it ends?’

‘Because it’s true.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m too far gone. You said it yourself, Rey. I’m a monster. And monsters shouldn’t be given as many chances as I’ve already had.’

His weakness was hers. The more he explained, the more he implored her to do what needed to be done, the less she wanted to agree. Where he found it easier to call himself a monster and offer his head, she found it all the more difficult to accept.

‘A true monster wouldn’t give himself up,’ Rey stated, hopeful.

‘I’m not,’ Ben replied, his tone grim. ‘When the day comes I won’t be ready to meet it, my fear is already too great. I will fight. You must be ready. Train – and train well. Do you understand?’

Rey nodded, despite herself. She _did_ understand, and she was slowly submitting to the fact that he was right. 

It wasn’t ending any other way. She’d have to kill him.

‘You understand,’ Ben surmised, reaching out his gloved hand with hesitation and stroking her cheek with his thumb.

She put her hand over his to keep it there for a moment, leaning into his touch.

‘Ben,’ she murmured, her voice full of sorrow. She would never tire of saying his name. Whatever else he called himself, saying that name felt like treading hallowed ground.

All of a sudden she could feel warmth stealing back to her, the tingling in her fingers returning. The edges of his room were starting to blur. 

The connection was breaking… Who knew when it would come back? Who knew if it ever would?

She tried to sort through all the things she wanted to say just in case there wasn’t another chance, and she could see him doing the same, eyes darting around wildly.

‘Rey,’ he said quickly, finding the courage to speak first, ‘Remember what I said. Promise me that when the time comes you won’t hesitate.’

‘I promise,’ she replied, her eyes spilling over with tears. ‘But you promise me something too, alright? Your fears, your anger… They make you human. Let yourself feel them, properly. Listen to them, but know this: they do not control you. You are your actions, Ben, not your title. You are who you choose to be.’

He inclined his head reluctantly, as if to agree. She didn’t need to use the force to know he was overwhelmed, as off-balance as ever. Already the doubt was playing across his face, the threat of failure and inadequacy stealing into his heart, a slideshow of potential future humiliations playing in his head.

The bond was fading fast, weakening by the second. She held his hand to her cheek, hard.

‘You are enough,’ she whispered, meeting his watery eyes, and then he was gone.

Her bare palm pressed into her cheek, the gloved hand no longer present. The smell of leather lingered for a moment and she closed her eyes, breathing it in. 

She longed to reach out to him again, in every sense of the word.

He had sealed their fates. His request was not one to be taken lightly, and she would fulfil it – come hell or high water, she would fulfil it. As much as the thought of it pained her, she owed it to the man inside the monster.

The only person left in the galaxy who understood her – truly understood – and now he was firmly in her scope, instead of being just another elusive moving target. She couldn’t risk another campaign to turn him to the light; if she lost this time, the Resistance likely wouldn’t survive. He knew where they were, after all. A sudden change of mind and they’d all be dead. It was purely by the grace of his conflicted heart that any of them were still alive.

Snoke’s words appeared in her head, the memory of a threat she had been given in the throne room, her thoughts always returning to that place.

_I will kill you with the cruellest stroke._

She frowned at that, finally moving her hand off her cheek and trying to forget Ben’s touch for the sake of the Resistance, for the sake of focus.

Perhaps the cruellest strokes of all were the ones that didn’t kill.

**Author's Note:**

> First fanfic I've written in years, and first time posting on Ao3!
> 
> This was mainly written to get my feelings about these two space idiots out of my head but after a while it took on a life of its own. If people are interested I'll probably write more, I'm so enamoured of these two that it's not even funny. I'd love to know what you thought!


End file.
